


Fall in Line

by mousemind



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:46:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6636001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousemind/pseuds/mousemind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared can't recall exactly how long he's been this way - this forced compliance, this curse - but everything he's commanded to do, he must fulfill exactly as ordered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall in Line

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt!](http://siliconvalleykink.dreamwidth.org/1066.html?thread=182826#cmt182826) Can't resist some magical realism, what can I say?

"Donald, you should leave the room," the doctor says, his face an unreadable mask of practiced impassivity. What Donald wants to say is, no, that's my mother. That's my mother, just there, and you can't ask me to leave. He feels like he could pitch a fit, which is not something that Donald has ever done, realistically. His insides feel twisted up; a hot, heavy knot that takes his breath away.  
  
Instead, Donald nods and shuffles out into the waiting room, to the purple couch he's spent so many hours on. He can see where he's kicked a small scuff into the upholstery with his antsy, growing-pained legs. He collapses into a familiar slouch, eyes cast towards the closed door.  
  
"No," Donald says, so under his breath it's more an exhalation than an idea. Something tugs at his sternum, like a cold, thin chain that keeps him sitting there, despite the clanging warning bell in his mind. He closes his eyes and falls asleep on the couch for the last time. Tomorrow, he will leave this hospital with a strange woman's hand on his shoulder, tender but leading.  
  
"Will I have to - to put the funeral together?"  
  
"No, Donald, someone else will arrange that."  
  
"I don't know how to pack up our house. Do I have to do it alone?"  
  
She squeezes his shoulder.  
  
"No more questions, Donald," she says, gently. There's that pull, again, in the place where his chest concaves slightly. Every question dies on his tongue. Donald walks on, silent.  
  
-  
  
Donald realizes that there's only so long he can hide it. He recognizes the sick finality of it in the cruel way Patrick smiles and says, "Oh yeah? Give me your sneakers," and Donald instantly kicks them across to the other side of the room. The brand new Reeboks that were a gift from Mrs. Montanez, as she drove him out of Pennsylvania and out towards Cleveland. He shouts, No! It isn't fair! but those words stick like glass in his throat, and he watches Patrick slip them on, parade around their small, shared room.  
  
Even his most well-meaning teachers, the ones who would be ashamed if they really knew the truth of his obedience, just find Donald so helpful, so tireless, so fastidious as he stays behind to clean up and fix the bulletin boards and run the early-morning bake sales.  
  
And, the college boyfriend who takes Donald's hands and pleads, "baby, baby, stay with me" and Donald unloads all of his belongings out of his duffle bag at his feet and stays another eight months.  
  
Years later, he reconnects with Dennis, an old foster father: a recent widower who is so happy to see Donald again, to see him succeed, to see him earning his way in the world. Donald is thrilled. Intoxicated, really, by his attention and affection, by the rare joy of being with someone with shared memories between them. Donald takes him to work functions at Hooli, explains that even though he's 'Jared' now, Dennis can always call him Donald - Donnie - if he likes. Donald is happy to help him when Dennis is evicted from his apartment, is happy to drive Dennis upstate for his physical therapy and to foot the bill, happy to bend over backwards without even being asked, for once. It feels like a privilege to help of his own volition without the strange pull, the the inexplicable, self-driven demand.  
  
Dennis shows up one evening, too late, his eyes wild.  
  
"I'm out of money, kid," he says, immediately. "I'm flat out."  
  
He tells some convoluted story about his friends, about his landlord. He is drunk, heavy, slurring and sloppy on Jared's new couch.  
  
"Donnie," he entreats, "you just gotta."  
  
Don't say it, Jared thinks. I'll help you. Just don't ask. Don't demand this of me.  
  
"Donnie, boy, you gotta help me."  
  
"Yes," he replies, so rote, so disappointing, and always so, so hard.  
  
-  
  
What it feels like is immense pressure. Or, perhaps, drowning in something ice-cold, though Jared can only assume.  
  
His obedience always must be immediate, and complete. Otherwise.  
  
Well, Jared doesn't know otherwise. The one time he'd fought so valiantly, had tried so hard to resist a command, he recalls very little besides losing his vision and his breath, and coming to after completing his task.  
  
Erlich says, "I'm gonna have to ask you to leave" and Jared's feet shift immediately beneath him, though he digs his fingernails into the flesh of his palms. Richard looks back at him sort of helplessly, surprised and indignant and a bit too frazzled, and Jared selfishly thinks, all you have to do is tell me not to. All you have to say is 'stay.'  
  
"Richard," Jared interjects, as quickly as he can. Richard looks up at him, and Jared feels momentarily blinded by the fantasy that maybe this time he won't have to listen to someone else's command. He'll feel so strongly that it just allows him to shuck Erlich's suggestion like an old skin. Maybe, Jared thinks, I just never wanted anything enough until now.  
  
"I just want to say, I really respect what you're doing here."  
  
His chest constricts as he feels a tug in that space, that hollow, sensitive stretch where his ribs come together. He feels at first hot, as if punished by some electric shock, and then paralyzingly cold.  
  
"And if you could ever use someone with my business development skill set, I would love to be a part of this."  
  
Richard looks like he might say something, though later Jared will chalk it up to wishful thinking. What Richard really does Jared will never know, as his vision blinks out like a broken television set, and the next thing he knows, he's sitting in his parked car in their drive way.  
  
He isn't so far away that he can't see, through the half-drawn blinds, Richard sit back down at his laptop, surrounded by friends and the kinds of people who deserve to have impossibly daring lives of their own choosing.  
  
-  
  
"Jesus," Richard says, scrubbing his hands over his face. Before them is an impressive, air-tight business plan. Something that hardly existed nearly five hours ago.  
  
Richard laughs nervously, throwing his head back and sprawling, gracelessly, in his chair. Jared is overcome by a remarkable and unfamiliar desire, both to never leave this strange and impossible moment, and for Richard himself, so nervous and brilliant and wild in his ambition.  
  
"Thank you," Richard says, finally. "I can't believe - "  
  
"What?"  
  
"That we did. All of that."  
  
"We're not done yet," Jared replies, kindly. He pats Richard's knee affectionately, before jerking his hand away, shocked at his own inappropriate, unwelcome familiarity. Richard hardly flinches, though, his eyes bright with exhaustion and relief.  
  
"Jared, this is - I'm sorry if this is too much - "  
  
Yes, Jared thinks. Please. Please, ask it of me.  
  
"I want you to work for Pied Piper."  
  
Jared grins, can only nod his assent. There's a rush of relief, of joy, of something akin to winning a previously-unknown freedom that's intoxicating in its promise. He can hardly remember the last time something he desperately wanted aligned with something that was asked of him.  
  
"Good," Richard exhales, his nervous legs bouncing, his fingers entangled in the strings dangling from his hoodie. "Do I -- do I have to like, make you a contract?"  
  
"I'll deal with that, Richard," Jared assures, with remarkable earnestness. "You don't have to worry about anything like that anymore."  
  
-  
  
"Jared, Jared," Richard calls out, padding down the hallway behind him. Jared wants to turn around but finds it impossible, finds that as foolish as it seems, it nonetheless goes against the command "get the fuck out," and so there's nothing he can do but keep walking. It was a joke, Jared knows. Or, at least it had the shades of one, in Gilfoyle's familiar deadpan.  
  
Richard touches Jared's elbow, lightly. It is so sweet and tentative and considerate, and Jared would like nothing more than to turn to face him, to thank Richard for all the times he's chased him down to usher Jared back into a room after an utterance - an unknowing command - like this. It isn't until Richard wheezes,  
  
"Stop, Jared, it's -- they weren't being serious."  
  
Jared halts and turns on his heel, overcome by what he'd like to think is gratitude but feels - frighteningly - more like love, and does his best to feign ignorance, like it was all a simple misunderstanding.  
  
"Oh, would you like me to come back into the conference room?"  
  
Why does Jared have to say things like that, Richard thinks, a little angrily, a little too reflexively. Why does he have to call their shitty den "the conference room" and smile so widely when people insult him, and stride immediately out the door at the slightest suggestion. Richard knows from experience, if you keep your head down, if you say nothing at all, it's harder to invite attention, and with that attention, cruelty.  
  
Richard casts a pitying glance back over his shoulder where he thinks he hears snickering. Or perhaps he's imagining it. It's hard to tell now, mired in a defensive, protective paranoia he's never felt on anyone else's behalf before.  
  
"We can finish this in the kitchen alone, maybe," Richard hedges, much to Jared's secret, eternal relief.  
  
-  
  
Jared must say, all things considered, he's never been happier. Even if that means he's cleaned the house top to bottom over a dozen times. Even if that means he's slept in his car a good few nights after being told to finish a near-impossible work load.  
  
As much time as he spends with Richard, it seems to be Dinesh who catches on first. Someone always does, Jared has learned. He's never quite escaped it.  
  
It starts small. Things like, Jared, I don't have time to fill this out, you should do it.  
  
And then, Jared, I left my phone if the other room, go get that for me.  
  
Dinesh watches him, a bewildered grin growing, lopsided, on his face as Jared finishes out whatever task he'd set out for. And Jared instantly knows. Jared knows that look.  
  
Not long after, Jared hears Dinesh call from the kitchen, "Jared, come in here."  
  
He does.  
  
Dinesh leans against one of the counters, alone in the space, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.  
  
"Sit down."  
  
He does. Dinesh stands up, just a bit taller.  
  
"Now, get up again."  
  
Jared springs to his feet, his hands suddenly numb, a prickly shame lodged like a knife between his shoulder blades.  
  
"Say your name."  
  
"Jared Dunn."  
  
"Your real name."  
  
"Donald. Donald Dunn."  
  
"Why do you do this?" Dinesh asks, with incisive clarity, looking at Jared with a level of focused consideration completely unfamiliar in their professional relationship thus far.  
  
Jared sucks in air through his teeth and lies, "I don't know what you mean."  
  
"Okay. Get on your knees," Dinesh snaps, challengingly. Jared drops to his knees with a thud, his stomach a tight gnarl of shame. He looks at the dirty linoleum before him, afraid to look anywhere else.  
  
"Christ, Jared," he hears Dinesh exhale somewhere above him. "Get up. This is insane."  
  
Gratefully, he rises to his feet. He rasps, "sorry," over a ragged knot in his throat.  
  
"You don't have to listen to me," Dinesh says, with an odd, uncharacteristic sort of empathy.  
  
"I do," Jared answers, focusing on a splash of light from the kitchen window on the floor. It occurs to him that if he never looks up, Dinesh won't ever see how mortified, how devastated he feels.  
  
"You do," Dinesh repeats back to him, sort of hollowly, somewhere between a question and a puzzled revelation.  
  
Jared nods. "Everything you say. Everything anyone says."  
  
Dinesh, mercifully, says nothing at all. Jared wonders what he can say to quit - how he can word his letter of resignation - that won't make Richard feel like this is some sort of personal failure. He deserves that, at least, in the midst of his all-consuming stress.  
  
"Shit," Dinesh huffs, at length, sliding into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, his head in his hands.  
  
"Will you - " Jared asks, his tongue suddenly leaden in his mouth, his vision going a bit blurry with barely-hidden tears, "Please don't tell anyone. Don't let them."  
  
He clears his throat, continues as bravely as he can muster,  
  
"You must understand how frightening this is. For me. For me to know that you know."  
  
Dinesh looks back at him, vacillating between bewildered and disbelieving and oddly vindicated.  
  
"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I. I won't say anything."  
  
"Thank you," Jared sighs.  
  
"Um. Sure," Dinesh replies, suddenly uncomfortable and wry again. "Get out of here and like, have a nice dinner, or something."  
  
He sits bolt upright in his chair, in an instant, and quickly adds,  
  
"Or don't. Do whatever you want to do. Shit."  
  
Jared brushes some dust off of the knees of his khakis and smiles, genuinely.  
  
"Thank you, Dinesh, I think I'll do just that."  
  
No one needs to know that what he really does is walk around the block, exorcising his crash of emotions far away from anyone he knows, crying into his handkerchief and laughing and thinking how lucky he is - to get to go back to work tomorrow, to get to see Richard again, to have been spared something awful that others had taken advantage of before. A bird whoops in a tree nearby, a familiar call. Jared must say, all things considered, he's never been happier.  
  
-  
  
The dizzying victory at TechCrunch eventually fizzles away into profound exhaustion, a sort of punch-drunk giddiness that makes Jared feel a bit like he's invincible, but also like he could come apart at the seams at any moment. He sits, almost too heavy to move, on the couch in their hotel room, everyone else asleep long ago in a dazed blitz of drunkenness.

Richard emerges from the shared bathroom trailing steam, a damp towel around his shoulders. His hair is wet, messy, in some places plastered to his forehead and others wild and towel-mussed. Richard waves, a small half-gesture, and Jared sits up on the couch, like being called to attention.

He wonders if he should feel guilty, like somehow he isn't meant to be privy to this, to Richard in a threadbare old SEGA t-shirt and flannel pants hanging too-short above his ankles. Richard, with skin warm and pink from heat, smiling, away from the hostel and their computers and the frantic pace of Palo Alto. 

"Where'd everyone go?" Richard asks, tossing the towel back into the bathroom behind him and closing the door. 

"Asleep, I think," Jared says, casting a look around the messy living room, now dotted with empty beer bottles and pizza boxes and two-day old clothing.

"Erlich took the single room, I think," Jared continues, as Richard approaches slowly, calmly, almost uncharacteristically serene. "But this couch is nice, and I don't mind the floor." 

"Jared," Richard says. Jared looks up, but Richard has gone silent, his face unreadable. He's very close. Noticeably so. He takes a seat beside Jared on the couch, forgoing the many empty chairs nearby. Jared swallows hard, feeling a bit caught, a bit like Richard may have discerned what he was really thinking about when Richard entered the room. 

"Do you feel any better?" Jared asks, instead, to fill the silence. "Has your stomach settled?"

"Yeah," Richard says. His mouth twists into something like a smile, like he's holding back something secret and funny. "I'm. Jared, it's so weird. I'm not nervous at all right now." 

"That's good to hear, Richard," Jared replies. "You deserve a little peace. I'm proud of you."

Richard visibly flushes, ducks his head. Jared follows the line of his neck, down to his bony shoulders, so visible and oddly tantalizing in his faded, red shirt.

"We did a good job," Richard says, quietly, still not quite able to look up. "I feel like when we leave here it's going to go back."

"Back?"

"To all the running and fighting and - " Richard stops then, suddenly, in the middle of his thought. He exhales deeply, strangely quiet and free of his usual flustered scramble. He puts a hand on the couch between them - not quite touching Jared's thigh, but close. Closer than their usual, close enough to be purposeful. 

"You look tired, if you want to sleep I'll be okay," Richard concludes, not entirely punctuating the sentence he'd begun. It's a kind offer, but a deflection, and Jared feels just intoxicated enough from the victory and the closeness and the strange camaraderie of the day that he puts his hand over Richard's. Richard looks at their hands, then up at Jared, surprised but free of fear.

"Are you going to leave Pied Piper," asks Richard, his voice tinny and distant, despite the fact that they've never been closer. Jared, in a moment of clarity, free of self-deprecation, knows that what Richard is really asking is, _are you going to leave me?_

"Never," Jared answers, resolutely. His other hand rests on Richard's shoulder, so thin and tense. He squeezes, gently, and Richard's hand finds purchase on Jared's knee.

"Do you..." Richard begins, with difficulty. 

"Yes," Jared affirms, overcome with gratitude. His fingers slide beneath the fabric, feeling Richard's skin, so alarmingly warm.

"Kiss me," Richard says, and Jared hardly even feels the tug, the ever-present demand to follow an order, as he's so caught up in what feels like a remarkable fantasy, the most impossible part of his life suddenly come true.

-

Richard is right, though. They drop back into their usual hectic schedule, the meetings, the considerations, the lawsuit. The strange dreamlike delight of being alone in the hotel room is almost immediately shattered as Richard is strung back into his anxiety, his time completely dominated those who demand his attention.

Jared wishes he could be that kind of person. The kind of person who could say, _Richard, let's debrief here for a moment_ , or _Richard, do you want to talk about what happened back at TechCrunch?_ but instead he finds it easier to push those feelings away, to follow closely behind Richard in the familiar way that'll put them both at ease.

They do come together, but only twice. The first time, Jared finds Richard standing out by the pool some time past midnight, alone, chewing at his fingers with a strange intensity. When Jared says his name, Richard startles so violently that he almost pitches into the pool. Jared holds him up, not quite tenderly, but with fastidious, remarkable care, and Richard looks up into his impossibly sweet, open face and rasps,

"Yeah. Please. Do it."

And Jared kisses him, and takes him back to his small guest house, and Richard apologizes over and over for making any noise at all, until Jared makes sure he feels so good that he can't even think to speak.

The second time is even shorter, and in the back of Jared's car, as Richard turns to him with frustrated tears in his eyes and says,

"I know... I know I'm better than this, Jared. Everything just keeps going to shit."

"It will be all right, Richard," Jared assures, gently adjusting Richard's wrinkled collar.

"I feel..." Richard stutters and turns bright red. "I haven't slept in days. Can you - I want - "

Jared would do it, gladly, and almost asks Richard to say no more. But before he can even think to, Richard keens,

"Please, do... you know. I want to feel -- "

"Yes," Jared replies, obediently. It feels almost unfair to have that strange, tugging feeling in his chest as he pulls Richard's pants down around his ankles. He wants this. Profoundly so. He desires exactly this, fantasizes about it, even, when he's alone and lonely. Why does it have to feel so much like all those other times, when he was powerless in the grasp of a careless behest?

Still, Jared fulfills his task excellently, like usual. Like always.

-

His Hooli tag clacks against the buttons of his track jacket, like a needling reminder that Jared should leave, must leave, as soon as he possibly can. But he's cornered in the lobby, surrounded by a throng of people still exiting the conference, and the door seems impossibly far away.  
  
"Oh, come on, just because the companies we work for are rivals doesn't mean you have to pretend you don't know me," this man - Brian - wheedles, pushing Jared's arm in an uncharacteristically, strangely playful way. Jared blushes, wonders if he should feel a bit guilty.

"I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. It's just that I really need to leave." 

"Yeah, me too, I'll walk out with you."

_This man used to work for you, Donald_ , Jared tells himself, setting his shoulders a little straighter. _Don't let him shake you._

"It's just that, with the lawsuit, I don't feel we should be speaking," Jared says, professionally, hoping to end their conversation. There's a swell of people at their back, inching them towards the door. Jared turns away, busying himself with absolutely anything he can find in his shoulder bag.

"Dude," he sighs, "That's out of our hands. Nothing we say or do is going to affect the outcome of the lawsuit. Let me get you a drink."

"Yes," Jared replies, before his brain can even catch up to his automatic compliance. He bites down on his bottom lip so hard in retaliation that he tastes blood. _Shut up, shut up_ , he scolds himself.  

"You must have some crack legal team lined up, right?"

He bites again, harder, furious at himself, at his choices - or lack thereof. 

"It's okay, Jared. Just tell me." 

Jared stops dead in his tracks. He's going to leave. He's going to do it. He steps aside, out of the crowd of people, and for a moment loses sight of his once co-worker. He thinks of Pied Piper, of everyone scrambling back at the incubator, facing set-back after set-back. He thinks of Richard, poised to lose everything he's worked for and then, what? What if they lose it all? Does Richard go back to Hooli? Do they ever see each other again? He remembers Richard with tears in his eyes, confessing, almost pleadingly, "I know I'm better than this, Jared."

_You are, you are_ , Jared thinks to himself. _Richard, you are._

His vision goes hazy, and then flashes out, suddenly. The next thing he's aware of is a cold drink in his hand - vodka, he doesn't even like vodka - sitting hunched over a bar top, spewing words. Secret, awful truths about Russ, and deleting hours of someone else's content, and Pete Monahan, and even Richard. 

Brian laughs at something Jared is only even vaguely aware of saying.

"Hendricks, the poor fucker. He's really smart, too," Brian says. "Sometimes it just doesn't work out."

A teardrop splatters on the sticky, wooden countertop beside his drink. Jared wipes it away, furtively, with the cuff of his sweater.

-

By the time Jared is back to confess to Richard, the news has already circled back to him through chiding, leading texts from old coworkers at Hooli.

Richard is standing in the middle of the room, looking down at his phone clutched in his hands, his eyebrows knit together in something that looks less like anger than profound confusion. He looks up at Jared, bursting breathlessly through the front door, and what Jared registers in the heavy set of his shoulders, the way he gapes back at him with an empty sort of resignation, is _injury_. He briefly, hatefully fantasizes about Richard commanding him to do something awful; to say fuck off or I don't want to see you again or go drive your fucking car into a tree.

But instead Richard says,

"Is it true?"

And Jared nods.

"Why did you," Richard groans, like all of his worst fears are coming true. "Jared. Why."

Jared looks at him, feeling so small, so ashamed, and still so full of an impossible longing. He is in love with Richard, in a way that he's never loved another person before.

So he tells him. What else can he do?

\- 

"When did you realize that, um. You know." 

"Around the time my mother died."

Richard winces and nods, rapidly, like he's processing that information, storing it away. They've found their way into Richard's room, behind a locked door, but still Jared has never felt so exposed, telling a person the full truth for the first time in his life.

"Did that... this is a stupid question," Richard reprimands himself. "But did that start it?" 

"I don't know," Jared says, "I can hardly tell. Maybe I've been this way since I was born but it wasn't an issue when I lived with my mother."

"Never?"

Jared shrugs, looks vaguely away.

"She never asked anything of me I didn't want to do," he answers. Richard pales, considerably, his jaw slightly agape.

"Jared," he says, "Jared, I. Fuck."

"It's all right, Richard, everything that we've done -- " 

Richard buries his face in his palms and his shoulders heave, once, viciously, like perhaps he'd quelled a sudden wave of nausea.

"I'm so. Jared. I'm so stupid, I made you - "

"Richard, I wanted to. I'm sorry if that's inappropriate, but everything we did, I... "

He touches Richard's arm, just barely.

"I wanted it, too. For a very long time."

Richard looks back at him, through splayed fingers. His breath hitches in a strange way, somewhere between an exhale and a laugh.

"You did?" 

Jared nods, takes Richard's hands and lowers them gently into his lap. Richard grips back around Jared's wrists, hard, like Jared might change his mind if he stepped back for an instant. 

"I believe in you, and in Pied Piper. Working alongside you - being with you - Richard, I've never been happier."

"Thanks, Jared," Richard manages, a bit waveringly. Jared aches for the Richard back in the hotel room at TechCrunch, so open and placid and free of desperation and stress. Maybe someday, after Richard has made his millions, they'll reconnect. They'll laugh about this silly lawsuit and Russ Hanneman and Gavin Belson and every other little obstacle that seemed insurmountable at the time.

"That's why I need to quit," Jared concludes, keeping his voice as even as he can.

Richard recoils, lifting his hands up and away from Jared, vacillating between shock and outrage and something that Jared thinks might be sadness. 

"What," Richard says, and the word falls out of his mouth like it's heavy, like it's poison. Jared nods, unshed tears burning his eyes as he willfully blinks them away.

"I'm a liability," Jared continues. "You can't have me around. Not with Pied Piper the way that it is. Not when I -- "

He doesn't have to finish that sentence, but it occurs to Jared that he has no idea when he might see Richard again, and for once, he isn't being told what to do. He _wants_ to tell him, despite the embarrassment, the fallout, the possibility of Richard's disdain. He wants. So he does.

"Not when I love you so much," Jared finishes.

-

Jared lets the phone ring three times, just in case it's a mistake, a pocket-dial, a misguided moment of weakness. Richard's name and picture are displayed, almost tantalizingly, on his screen. Even when he picks up, he doesn't dare speak first. Jared hasn't seen Richard since their last talk, since his confessions, since his decision to leave Pied Piper.

"Why quit, what would be the point? We're going to lose the company in a week anyway," Richard had said, somewhat despairingly, though he'd been aiming for something more like a wry joke. His voice had been so ragged, spread thin as if stretched over the massive swath of emotions he'd been valiantly tamping down.

His voice sounds the same, now, as he warbles,

"Um, Jared? Are you there?"

"Hello, Richard," he replies, with the professional dignity of any other business phone call.

"Help," Richard mutters, with a palpable, noticeable undercut of self-directed spite. "I don't -- I know we're not supposed to be talking now. I don't know who else to call." 

Jared, despite himself, softens instantly, standing and sequestering himself in a quiet corner of the coffee shop he's in and cradling one hand around the base of his cell phone.

"Are you all right? Are you - did someone hurt you?"

"No," Richard laughs briefly, sharply. "I wish. I'm. Fuck, Jared, it's pathetic."

"Richard?"

"I can't tie my tie," Richard blurts out. "For the -- you know. Today. I'm so stupid. I don't know how."

Jared exhales, relieved and still, despite himself, impossibly charmed.

"I'm not far away," Jared says. "I'll be there soon."

-

"There," Jared breathes, stepping back. "Take a look."

Richard turns and looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, small and clouded, and sighs his relief. Jared sees himself in the reflection, just over Richard's shoulder, too close and oddly specter-like in his pallidness, his out-of-place stillness juxtaposed with Richard fidgeting, picking at his shirtsleeves. 

"Thank you," Richard quietly says. "I'm. Uh. I'm embarrassed."

"No need," Jared deflects, gently. "It was no trouble. All over now."

The words hang uneasily in the air between them, an unfortunate and unintended double-entendre. Jared feels his ears burning - betraying his feigned calm confidence - and Richard huffs a sharp, unhappy laugh.

"Yeah," Richard says, stepping away. "I'm sorry I called. I didn't mean to - "

"No, it was my pleasure," Jared interrupts, with a hint of desperation. He touches Richard's collar, gently. Richard makes a small, indistinguishable little noise that stirs something wild and not well hidden inside Jared. He pinches the fabric of his collar between his fingers and pulls very gently, Richard leaning, then turning towards him. 

Richard is wide-eyed and bordering on manic. He licks his lips - not quite nervously, unthinkingly - almost embarrassingly appealing. Jared's fingers trace lightly above his collar, onto Richard's shockingly hot, flushed skin.

"Jared," Richard keens, achingly. "I'm afraid of -- you should go. This was a stupid idea. Go."

Jared, instead, steps closer. 

"Would it make you feel better to know I was here?"

Richard nods, stutteringly.

"Then I'll be here," Jared assures. "I'll be here when you get back."

Erlich calls for Richard from out in the hallway. They both snap away in an instant, frightened and delighted and fatalistic and hopeful, all at once. Richard grabs his phone from off the bathroom counter and leaves, muttering some sort of apology.

"I won't leave, I swear," Jared says, again, as Richard puts his hand on the doorknob. Richard smiles back at him, once, and then is gone.

It isn't until the car has pulled out of the driveway and Jared has found work to do in the den that he realizes he stayed by choice, that Richard's suggestion to "go" went heard, but un-obeyed. Jared looks down at his hands, shaking violently in his lap. 

"Jared, get up, there's something happening on the live stream," Gilfoyle commands, entering the room. Jared waits a moment. A smile stretches across his face, so wide and so genuine it feels like he's never truly smiled before this moment.

"Sure," Jared complies, completely of his own volition. He pulls out the chair for Gilfoyle and everything. 

-

"And to think," Erlich drawls, much, much later, with them all around a communal table, tipsy and giddy, "We almost fucked the whole thing. Gone. Deleted."

He takes a sip of beer and then points the bottle, lazily, in Richard's direction. 

"We were gonna listen to you - goes to show what comes of that."

"Well," Richard postures, defensively. "How was I supposed to - "

He stops, then, and looks directly at Jared, flushed pink at the other side of the table, both from laughter and relief and a beer or two.

"You didn't," Richard says, in a strange, clipped sort of way. Jared shakes his head no.

"You didn't have to."

"No," Jared answers, barely a whisper.

Richard is halfway to his room when it occurs to Jared he should be following, so he sprints out behind him, a muffled chorus of jeers thrown behind him by his confused but ultimately too lazy to pursue coworkers.

Richard slams the door behind them and looks up at Jared, a wild, flustered sort of exuberance radiating off of him.

"It's done," Jared says, to aid him, and because it feels so good to say. "I don't know how, but I - Richard it has something to do with you, and I can't explain why, but when I left, to protect you - I didn't even realize until this morning."

"And it's over? For good?"

"I don't know," Jared replies, a bit caught. "I don't -- well, Richard, I'll cross that bridge should we arrive there. But for now."

"For now," Richard echoes, stepping forward.

"For now," asserts Jared, smiling, "There's something I very much want to do."

"Please," Richard answers, leaning in, and Jared does exactly what he'd dreamed of doing, regardless of Richard's pleading whimpers; falling apart so happily, so relieved, under Jared's hands.


End file.
